Setting buyer requirements

To increase your chances of making a sale, you'll usually want as many potential buyers as possible. However, we understand that there may be certain types of buyer you don't want to do business with, or certain regions or countries where you don't want to send items.

You can choose to:

• Exclude shipping locations so that buyers can't check out with a shipping address you don't want to ship to
• Set buyer requirements to block buyers from bidding on or agreeing to buy your items, based on certain criteria
• Allow buyer exemptions for individual buyers who are being blocked by your requirements

You can also choose to block individual buyers from purchasing your items.

Excluding shipping locations

If you don't want to ship to specific locations, you can prevent buyers from using a shipping address in those locations.

You can set exclusion lists for both domestic regions and international countries/regions. You can also decide whether to create a single default exclusion list and apply it to all your active listings, or set exclusion lists for individual listings.

Exclude shipping locations - opens in new window or tab

Once you've set up and applied your shipping exclusions, buyers won't be able to complete checkout with an address that you won't ship to. However, buyers from these regions could still bid on or buy your items, unless you've also set buyer requirements.

If you ship internationally with eBay International Shipping, eligible items may be shipped through this program to locations you have currently excluded. See our eBay International Shipping page for more information.

Updating your buyer requirements

You can set requirements to prevent buyers from bidding or buying on your items if they:

• Have a delivery address that's in one of your excluded shipping locations
• Have a history of canceled orders because they didn't pay
• Are currently winning, or have bought, a specified number of your items in the last 10 days

Here's how to set up your buyer requirements:

1. Go to Buyer Management - opens in new window or tab.
2. Decide which requirements you’d like to apply to your listings, and enter any details requested.
3. To have settings apply to all active and future listings, select Apply above settings to active and future listings. Otherwise your settings will apply only to future listings.
4. By default, blocked buyers are still able to contact you about your listings. If you don’t want buyers blocked by your requirements to contact you, select Don’t allow blocked buyers to contact you in Site Preferences (they may still be able to get in touch with you through an Item Not Received case or a Return if it’s about an existing transaction). Then select Submit.

How to view your Buyer requirements activity log

Your Buyer requirements activity log includes who you blocked, the date they were blocked, and which requirement caused them to be blocked.

View your Buyer requirements activity log - opens in new window or tab.

Tip
If you see an asterisk in place of a username in the Buyer requirements activity log, it is because we aren’t able to share the information due to our User Privacy Notice and User Agreement.

Allowing buyer exemptions

To exempt particular buyers from your requirements, you can add the username to your Buyer requirements exemption list.

Update buyer exemption list - opens in new window or tab